Creativity+&+Mental+Ilness


 * __Creativity & Mental Ilness__**

Artistry is a very sensitive field socially and psychologically. How many of us were told at a young age that pursuing art, music and theater was not an option because it won’t make you money? Not too often do we hear parents say that they worry for our mental well being. Fields that heavily require a creative mind are suffering from something more than making ends meet with bill. Did you ever stop to notice how artists like Jackson Pollock, Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Cobain and most recently Alexander McQueen and Heath Ledger cut their lives short at their prime? Why does it seem is that people who are great at what they do creatively, like Whitney Huston sometimes fall at the hands of their own creativity or fame? When dedicating your life to a field involving the creative process, should your parents be worried about something much bigger than money?

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Research shows that the more creative you are the more open your brain is to incoming stimuli for the outside environment. The less creative you are the more likely your brain is to shut out this stimuli in a process called **Latent inhibition** (University Of Toronto, 2003). Latent inhibition is a process more commonly referred to animals but still works in the human world. It is the unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs.

Seriousness of the topic comes into view when you understand that the creative mind cannot block out this extra stimuli from the environment because the person doesn't know how. It needs it to be functionally creative and the more creative you’re going to be the more open to stimuli you’re going to expose yourself to leading the creative mind to step closer and closer to metal illness. For example in early stages of Schizophrenia chemical changes often take place that lower latent inhibition disappears. This find would give anyone with who has ever said "music is my life" an uneasy feeling because by these laws you are also saying that music might also be your downfall. Scientist do however see a light at the end of the tunnel. Authors of the same study hypothesize that having a high IQ, memory and low latent inhibition allow a person to discriminate between the stimuli. They have the mental capacity to think about many things at one time and also be able to allow yourself to fix and edit those stimuli in a way that is useful instead of maddening.

Brain Imaging of Highly Creative People
Creative people share a number of traits with people who suffer from thought disorders. Shelly Carlson reports in numerous studies that eureka moments are linked to cognitive disinhibition. Colin Martindale's studies found that the moment of a new idea being formed corresponds with the appearance of alpha waves in the brain, like those found in REM sleep. At this moment there is a defocus of attention as well. Studies by John Kounios and Mark Beeman have uncovered that gamma waves are present when the new idea is recieved into cogniton and the alpha waves that precedes it is focused on internally. In this time, dopamine is produced, and it is also marked by a reduced capacity in the thalamic D2 receptors. This, along with the reduced attention, are similar to when unusual thoughts appear in sufferers of schizophrenia and other thought disorders.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the best selling novel turned box office hit __Eat Pray Love__, gives an inspiring, educational, interesting and creative way of thinking about how best to deal with mentall illness and stress for anyone pursuing careers which depends heavily on creative thinking.

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